I can think of couple of GP where Kimi was off. Like Monaco, Canada, Valencia. That people have diffrent opinion doesn't necessary mean they have an agenda

That people who don't have a deep enough understanding of the sport decide to call technical matters (or Kimi's inability to get the better of technical matters, if you prefer) as him being "off" is not really my problem. It really says something that you consider Monaco as him being "off" even after the various comments by Allison about the matter.

Even then you manage to bring up only three. Seanspeed's claim was that Fernando didn't have many off days. The same applies to Kimi, since 3 (2 if you grant me Monaco) is not "many".

Re: Rear wings, may be they plan to back-to-back them, to understand how to setup the new wing better.

Re: EBD, I think it was always unlikely to be introduced here even if the team have it in the pipeline. May be in Korea - Kimi had mentioned that they have some smaller updates here in Japan, and a bigger package in Korea.

But it's obvious that Alonso would have extracted more. Apart from his immense talent, he has had experience with the Pirelli tyres, has worked with Renault/Lotus before, the team has baseline setup preferences and telemetry from his earlier years, the team would know his steering preferences, etc.

It's bizarre to me that you would compare against Fernando of all people. If you want to be objective, you should compare Kimi's and Romain's performance against another driver who has just joined a team for the first time and is driving the Pirelli's for the first time (and correct for the difference in car performance of course). Then, and only then, can you make a reasonable case that Kimi/Romain has underperformed or over-performed even after expectations have been calibrated for them being new to the team and the tyres.

The above should be obvious to any objective F1 fan with a reasonable understanding of F1 and its history.

If some of you set your expectations really high initially and didn't account for both drivers being new to the team, you have only yourself to blame for not having a deep enough understanding of the sport.

I said an Alonso meaning obviously in general a top driver at the peak of his game who wouldn't under-perform in qualifying as often as Kimi has and could show comparable racecraft in the race. In reply to SpaMaster's analysis of Kimi's qualifying performances where he said Kimi has only really compromised himself one or two times, I counted six occasions where he was out-qualified by Grosjean and it compromised his race more or less:

Australia - missed out the Q2 cut by a tenth and a half. Should have probably made Q2 despite the mistakes as both drivers drove 9 laps in the session yet Kimi was 1.2s off.

Spain - Kimi: "We had too much some set-up issues before starting the Q1, but in the final run for the day, the car was at it’s best. Actually so good, that it surprised me in one corner. We lost some time and were out of the first row."

Monaco - Kimi: "Still I expected to be in TOP5. I had one a betterish lap, but then I locked up the tyre in the second part of the Swimming Pool area, and we lost some places there. Then it was P8 in the grid."

Europe - Kimi: "If we could have improved just a little bit on my last lap then we could have gained a couple of places, but it is an improvement on last time out so I’m very happy with that."

Hungary - Kimi: "I didn’t go faster when it mattered. The car feels good, but I didn’t get the crucial lap together at the right time."

Singapore - Allison: "In the all-important qualifying session neither driver had a good lap when it counted. Kimi had a mistake at T1 on his Q2 lap and Romain had a rather dramatic Q3 lap meaning he wasn’t able to repeat his earlier performances."

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Whether through the lack of pace, mistakes or just not putting the lap together, that's six out of fifteen or 40% of weekends with 'could have gained a couple of places but'. I don't think it's unrealistic to expect a lesser rate of that from the likes of Kimi, Alonso, Hamilton or Kubica (from just before the accident), new to a team or not.

Whether through the lack of pace, mistakes or just not putting the lap together, that's six out of fifteen or 40% of weekends with 'could have gained a couple of places but'. I don't think it's unrealistic to expect a lesser rate of that from the likes of Kimi, Alonso, Hamilton or Kubica (from just before the accident), new to a team or not.

If you managed to get riled up by various Kimi fans making certain claims and defensively ratcheted up your own expectations as a result, you have only yourself to blame.

In general, I support both the drivers and the entire team. I don't run around saying something like "The question remains: what would an Adrian Newey have done with a Lotus budget and resources". That would be silly.

Fair enough. Wasn't my intention to sound silly like that at all. I support the team and both drivers as well, let's hope the car is back on form this week

The weather looks good for all the weekend. But I'm a bit afraid that Romain still won't use the "device" on Friday, then how will he use it and try it during FP3 and Q? Will these sessions enough for him? As I remember he has not tried the "device" yet.

That's extremely one-sided view. Why don't you acknowlege also Grosjean's problems in quali? Like China or Germany or UK. Or the fact that on some circiuts he was driving for the first time? Or since you examine quali performance then why you put a comment that Kimi could overtake Romain into T3 in Valencia. Mysterious behaviour of the tyres in Singapore? Dude, both Permance and Allison confirmed it was Kimi's fault.

fanboyism much

You should really have some perspective. This was not abot Kimi vs Grosjean comparison. There is a separate thread. My post was to address your notion that drivers have let Lotus down. In Kimi's case, you had referred to qualy. Hence I addresses that to show that it really did not have any practical implication. As I said "there are only one or two races where Kimi was behind Grosjean in qualy pace and had his race compromised because of that". The point was that Kimi's apparent inferior qualy pace to Grosjean did not really matter much in the end. Clear?

As for Grosjean's qualy, Germany: He was struggling with set-up. Not like malfunctioning differential, is it?UK: Crashed in rain, isn't it?I don't remember what happened to Grosjean in China. Not relevant anyway to my original point.

The weather looks good for all the weekend. But I'm a bit afraid that Romain still won't use the "device" on Friday, then how will he use it and try it during FP3 and Q? Will these sessions enough for him? As I remember he has not tried the "device" yet.

im positive theyll put the device on his car too for FP2...they couldnt use the new rear wing spec in Singapore,so they want to try it here again without the device to get the baseline data on that wing..makes sense that they would prefer to find out a decent baseline setup with the new wing before they put the device in.

Kimi on the other hand needs a top 2 finish this weekend for his WDC chances so theyre prepared to put him on his old Hungary spec,something that they have plenty of data on and all they need to do now is to fine tune the device(which isnt any small feat according to Mark Hughes)

If on saturday, they find out that the new rear wing and the device combo on RG's car is better than KR's combo,im sure theyll switch the latter onto that too in FP3 or Quali...my two cents.

Kimi's quali woes as a driver might have been exaggerated, but so have been the Lotus' qualy woes as car characteristics. After Silverstone, the average qualifying position of the better Lotus driver in this regard (Grosjean) was higher than Alonso's average. Despite this, the better Lotus driver in the standings (Kimi) was trailing Alonso by 46 points already then. So basically by the middle of the season the Lotus was out-scored by an almost-two-wins-margin by a car that was on average slower in quali.

Ok, that was a very round-about way of making a point. I had already clearly pointed out that Kimi's apparent inferior qualy pace during few instances did not really matter much in the end. Now, you are bringing up that the Lotus car itself is not as bad a qualifier as it is made out to be. For this, you are comparing Grosjean's qualy results to Kimi's race results.First of all, Grosjean's qualy outing don't mean Kimi had incident-free qualies. As I pointed out in my earlier post, Kimi's qualy positions include team mistake, grid penalty, differential problem, misleading qualy position in Bahrain, etc. That is already 4 out of the first 9 races you referred to.

In Malaysia, I don't know where Alonso qualified (probably behind Grosjean). But the race day was entirely different to qualy situation. It was raining and it suited Ferrari better. In Valencia, Alonso may have qualified behind. But the race situations were such that Ferrari's initial ability to heat up the tyres better than Lotus meant that he got the jump on Lotus during restarts/pit-stops etc. The qualy times and pace of the cars were very close. Even though Alonso started P11, his car was much closer to the cars ahead than most instances. This is a classic example of a car slightly lacking in qualy pace, but still making up with early stint speed, pit-stop speed, etc.

When people say Lotus lacks qualy pace, it is in comparison to top qualifiers like Red Bull and McLaren. The point you made about Lotus' better qualy and Alonso's race performance, could be made for McLaren and Red Bull drivers' qualies and Alonso's performance as well. It does not really prove much. 46 points disappear very quickly if you consider the two races where qualy did not matter much and Alonso ended up winning them. During other times, only those starting in the front row have won and Vettel started P3 in the last race.

There is no "may" about it, he did. And it was more than a couple. Why you find it necessary to handwave your way around that is a mystery. So according to you, some types of mistakes are "allowed" and others not when a driver is new to a team. This is hair-splitting at its finest.

Like I said, making some mistakes in the heat of the moment is understandable for anybody, any season. What seperates top drivers from 2nd rate ones is how many 'off days' guys have.

More handwaving. Kimi hasn't been "off" anything. He has clearly and objectively had trouble with Q3, safety-car restarts, and the steering (in Monaco). That's about it. These are clearly identifiable areas to be improved upon. You don't have to try and make it seem like he is mysteriously "off" his previous best. All of these will be rectified next year.

Your attempts at being diplomatic aren't going down well because you're using a lot of weasel-words and handwaving and then moving the goalposts when you're called on it (Oh, I actually meant X, but said Y only to be nice).

Well you dont think Kimi's been off anything, but I'd say he has. I'm really not trying to go into the nitty gritty details. If you haven't seen it, I think you might be a bit biased or perhaps just see things differently. Either way, you're not going to change your mind about it, since you seem sold on the idea that its all about being new to the team and everything will be better next year. Just remember his 2nd year at Ferrari, though. Definitely wasn't an improvement, was it?

I think you've lost track of my entire point here anyways. I've said that Kimi's had a strong comeback year. I can easily understand how Lotus fans would be happy with everything thats happened overall. But korzeniow made a point that some people might not be quite as happy due to a few reasons and I merely got involved to help explain what he was trying to say about perception and expectations changing how satisfied somebody might be about whats happened this year. I can see both sides just fine, but some of you seem to be insisting that everyone feels the way they do about it.

..In reply to SpaMaster's analysis of Kimi's qualifying performances where he said Kimi has only really compromised himself one or two times, I counted six occasions where he was out-qualified by Grosjean and it compromised his race more or less:

Australia - missed out the Q2 cut by a tenth and a half. Should have probably made Q2 despite the mistakes as both drivers drove 9 laps in the session yet Kimi was 1.2s off.

Doing 8-9 runs is quite normal in a qualy session. Two runs with 4-5 runs in each of them. It was also quite common to try hards for a banker and then softs later on. Inferring anything from instantaneous time differences of drivers when one driver's run was interrupted can be misleading. As far as I can remember, Kimi was not lacking qualy pace compared to Grosjean in China and it was a case of team mistake and driver mistake, rather than qualy pace. This has nothing to do with the point I was addressing i.e. Kimi's inferior qualy pace compared to Grosjean compromising his race.

Spain - Kimi: "We had too much some set-up issues before starting the Q1, but in the final run for the day, the car was at it’s best. Actually so good, that it surprised me in one corner. We lost some time and were out of the first row."

Pretty much every driver has a story to tell after his lap. I could done better here. You never get the perfect lap. I lost a few tenth here, few thousandths, here etc. In this instance, when he said that the car was so good in one corner that it surprised him, he means he actually lost time by getting caught out by the surprising grip. Anyway, I would believe a car is a front row car when one of the drivers put it in the front row. All these interpretations and projections don't mean much. I will stick to addressing the original point - which was - Grosjean has done well in qualy, if only Raikkonen had done the same. So, in this case, did a qualy inferior to Grosjean hurt his race? No, he went past Grosjean off the start like nothing happened.

Monaco - Kimi: "Still I expected to be in TOP5. I had one a betterish lap, but then I locked up the tyre in the second part of the Swimming Pool area, and we lost some places there. Then it was P8 in the grid."

With a normal steering, he may have been in top5 inspite of all these regrets. The talking point of the Monaco GP was how much behind he was in catching up wrt pace, and that is all related to steering issues and loss of practice sessions. Mistakes in individual runs are moot points, he was just lacking in pace throughout. The difference was all evident. Trying to make it look like one mistake is what made all the difference is just not true. He was a woeful sight throughout. Bad weekends like this happen to everyone.

Europe - Kimi: "If we could have improved just a little bit on my last lap then we could have gained a couple of places, but it is an improvement on last time out so I’m very happy with that."

Again, if I had improved little bit here, little bit there. Come on. These are not proofs.

Hungary - Kimi: "I didn’t go faster when it mattered. The car feels good, but I didn’t get the crucial lap together at the right time."

Yes, we all know that.

Singapore - Allison: "In the all-important qualifying session neither driver had a good lap when it counted. Kimi had a mistake at T1 on his Q2 lap and Romain had a rather dramatic Q3 lap meaning he wasn’t able to repeat his earlier performances."

I had already counted it. So, wrt to the point I was making it was really 1 or 2 instances.

Thanks to those who contributed some usefull stuff to this thread (not talking about that senseless discussion )! Took me some time to find that posts!
I doubt that we get to see the DDRS during the race and qualifying! And this time Lotus doesn´t have an excuse (bad weather). Oh wait maybe Kimi will have an early off of technical problem tomorrow!

Thanks to those who contributed some usefull stuff to this thread (not talking about that senseless discussion )! Took me some time to find that posts! I doubt that we get to see the DDRS during the race and qualifying! And this time Lotus doesn´t have an excuse (bad weather). Oh wait maybe Kimi will have an early off of technical problem tomorrow!

Addressing the point that the Lotus car E20 has been let down by its drivers is totally relevant to the topic. If some of you don't like it, scroll down. I put up with some of your constant negativities and immature posts. Just because the discussion does not interest you, it does not mean it is off-topic. Live with it.

Either way, you're not going to change your mind about it, since you seem sold on the idea that its all about being new to the team and everything will be better next year. Just remember his 2nd year at Ferrari, though. Definitely wasn't an improvement, was it?

I guess we'll find out next year. I will state now that if Kimi does not maximize the car next year to the extent that Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton might, then he would have let down the car - no excuses.

I Just hope Lotus have a clean weekend at Suzuka. I'm afraid the DDRS tests will draw time away from precious setup time, bu they'll have to risk it.

Thanks to those who contributed some usefull stuff to this thread (not talking about that senseless discussion )! Took me some time to find that posts! I doubt that we get to see the DDRS during the race and qualifying! And this time Lotus doesn´t have an excuse (bad weather). Oh wait maybe Kimi will have an early off of technical problem tomorrow!

Its going to be a dry Friday in Suzuka and Lotus are going to run the device for sure.Atleast on one car.KR will run with the device right from FP1 and Romain will most probably run the new rear wing without the device.

Any news about the device? None of the drivers are using it during FP2?

I sure hope they will use the device but it looks like the device is not good at all and the situation reminds me about year 2003 when Kimi was fighting for title and McLaren promised him superfast mp4-18 which eventually never raced.

I sure hope they will use the device but it looks like the device is not good at all and the situation reminds me about year 2003 when Kimi was fighting for title and McLaren promised him superfast mp4-18 which eventually never raced.

If they didn't use it during FP1 and FP2, then it won't be raced this weekend, that's for sure. This device seems to be a big failure this year. But it can be a winner or differentiator next year if they can solve all of its problems this year. But currently it is a waste.

If they didn't use it during FP1 and FP2, then it won't be raced this weekend, that's for sure. This device seems to be a big failure this year. But it can be a winner or differentiator next year if they can solve all of its problems this year. But currently it is a waste.

Pretty mad now. KERS-problem destroying a lot of important time for Kimi. Good thing is that Romain seems close to the faster cars and Kimi is probably faster than Romain on this track, but getting no time to do a proper setup.